Latest Acquisitions (Feb 2022)

Car - Motoring Enthusiast Magazine

Car Magazine, January 1967, Cover

A very happy Deryck Pickup helping to load Richard’s car

We were contacted through our website by Deryck Pickup who lives in Milnrow with an offer of the donation of his collection of Car magazine. A date was arranged and I drove up to Milnrow to meet Deryck and take possession of the magazines. They were in superb condition and we were able to add significantly to our collection and upgrade many of our existing copies with better ones. An additional benefit was that we were able to put aside all of the duplicates to pass on to our good friend and benefactor Dean Butler who has just started building a collection of this title for his automotive library.

Car magazine started life as Small Car and Mini Owner incorporating Sporting Driver in 1962 (snappy title) before being renamed more simply as Car in 1965. The magazine has always been renowned for the quality of its writing and artwork and is still in production.

Our collection now holds 609 of the 689 issues published to December 2019.

Skinner’s - Trade Fabric Brochures

Skinner’s Cotton Trade Directory of the World, 1944

Skinner’s Cotton Trade Directory of the World, 1954

Skinner’s, or to give them their full titles:

• Skinner’s Wool Trade Directory of the World and

• Skinner’s Cotton Trade Directory of the World becoming

• Skinner’s Cotton and Man-Made Fibres Directory of the World in 1964

The directories are exactly as the titles suggest. If you wanted to know anything about the wool and cotton industries then Skinner’s was your reference point. The directories covered raw material suppliers, machine manufacturers, merchants and brokers, company addresses and production statistics.

The directory opened up a completely new set of words to me. I know what “shoddy” is but what on earth are “mungo”, “noils”, “tops”, “doublers”, “union twists”, “effect yarns”, “mercerised cotton striping yarns” etc. etc. etc.?

One advertisement alone by the Haslam Spinning Company Limited offers “carded, combed, mule, voils, crepes, cop, ringtube, cone, cheese, bundle, pirn, warp, beam and chain”.

Being based near Manchester we are almost at the centre of the erstwhile UK textile industry and so it is a real treat to hold these directories in our archive.

Melliand Textilberichte - Trade Fabric Brochures

This publication, a German magazine, was founded in 1919 and is a technical journal dealing with textile technology and developments. We have been lucky to acquire 113 copies of this monthly periodical spanning the years from 1928 to 1939. They provide a fascinating insight into both technical developments within the industry and the problems facing natural fibres from beetles, moths, caterpillars etc.

One of the best features for me is the regular inclusion of samples of fabrics (printed and woven) and examples of threads. These give a physical representation of actual materials nearly a century old and they all seem to be in as-new condition and must be an absolute boon to anyone studying textiles.

Glass Bottles

Although the archive is primarily based on “paper” advertisements we are also building collections of other forms of corporate promotion and this includes products that display and promote the company. An example of this is glass bottles and we were very fortunate to receive a donation by John French of about 20 bottles collected by his brother. Glass bottles give particular challenges to us in sharing their images because of the very nature of glass and bottles’ three-dimensional shape. This is obvious from the simple photographs I have taken for display in the newsletter.

One solution to this will be to set up an area in the archive with proper studio lighting and backdrops to improve the quality and artistry of the images. A step on from this would be to take video clips of the bottles rotating in order to show all sides of the bottle. A project for the future maybe? Perhaps there is someone out there who would fancy taking this little project on.

Classic & Sports Car

Another donation that has come in this month is a bound run of the first eight volumes of the magazine Classic & Sportscar (with the name incorrectly spelled on the spine). We already have a run of loose issues of this magazine but it is always good to have a bound run as these can then be used as reading copies, thus preserving the loose copies from potential damage. Loose copies are much more useful when a scan of a page is needed.

London’s Social Calendar

Just arrived are not one but two different copies of the glorious publication London’s Social Calendar. This publication is not dated but the advertisements indicate that it was published around 1914.

So how do we date it? We have to look for clues inside and here are some I used:

The menu card (image 2) refers to the Motor Show at Olympia. Looking at our collection of Motor Show catalogues we can see that the Motor Show moved from Olympia to Earls Court in 1937.

• The date is now earlier than 1937.

There is a picture of King George V (image 3) who was monarch from 1910 to 1935. The picture has him as “Admiral of the Fleet”, an appointment he gained in 1910, so this puts the publication date no earlier than 1910.

• The date is now later than 1909 and earlier than 1936.

There is a picture on page 19 of “A VISIT OF THE FRENCH PRESIDENT – The official reception by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales at Portsmouth. This picture appeared on the front cover of The Sphere on 28th June 1913.

• The date is now later than 28th June 1913 and earlier than 1936.

On page 25 there is a painting titled “Kensington Gardens”. Observing the picture we can see that it is dated 6.6.14 (assume 6th June 1914).

• The date is now later than 6th June 1914 and earlier than 1936.

Pages 28-29 show a picture of Mme Pavlova of the Imperial Russian Ballet. Anna Pavlova died on 23rd January 1931.

• The date is now later than 6th June 1914 and earlier than 23rd January 1931

On page 71 there is an advertisement for Straker-Squire Cars. It is known that this company ceased trading in 1926.

• The date is now later than 6th June 1914 and earlier than 1926.

An advertisement on page 87 for The Mutual Life Insurance Company gives their assets at 31st December 1914 as £123,000,000. (An assumption can be made that as it does not state 1915 year-end figures then this advertisement was used in the year 1915).

• We are therefore now certain that the date is later than 31st December 1914 and earlier than 1926.

Finally, we can look at the fashions in the various images. Since these are very unlikely to be anything but the very latest, we can provisionally date the publication to 1915. They are most definitely not from the 1920s. Any later date would possibly include mention of the effects of the First World War.

Although this dating involved a lot of research it was rewarding to obtain such an accurate result. Of course it doesn’t always work out that way but the more material we have in the archive the easier it will be to date items from the advertisements that appear in them (compared to dated copies of the same advertisement in other publications).